Peter Navarro is a smart man, at least on paper. He went to Tufts University for undergraduate then earned his master’s degree and became a Ph.D. at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Altogether he spent a dozen years as a student before becoming an academic as an economics professor at the University of California, Irvine.
And Peter Navarro is a Democrat, according to public record.
Navarro ran for office in San Diego, Calif., three times on a Democratic ticket, losing each race. More than a political consideration, liberal ideas animate his thinking. His book, Death by China, later made into a documentary of the same name, quotes as authoritative union bosses like Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO.
More than anything, though, Navarro is a political opportunist. Navarro went from liberal, anti-trade Democrat to President Trump’s chief trade advisor. Now he is credited with carrying the day for protectionist forces inside this Republican White House.
Perhaps these three facts explain the current strategy Navarro has taken on tariffs and trade wars. While he has done an able job at identifying China’s cheating in the global economy, his protectionist policy ideas have been thoroughly debunked and discredited by economists on the Right and the Left. Rather than fortify those arguments with facts and figures, Navarro has made an appeal to (political) force.
Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper to respond to three other pro-Trump economists who had publicly split with the president, Navarro replied, “When the president ran against 16 other Republican candidates, all 16 of those candidates didn’t embrace his trade agenda either, he beat them.”
But that is not an economic argument — it is a political one. Navarro isn’t even trying to defend his agenda with an honest debate. He is just dictating and hoping, against all evidence, that protectionism will finally work this time.
The only thing that seems certain about elections is that Trump won one in 2016 and, with his help, Republicans will lose them in 2018. So far, the economy has been this president’s saving grace. The tariffs will put an end to that.
